Happy Birthday to PowerPoint!         Presentation Software turns 20!

As PowerPoint turns 20-years-old this summer, I’m reminded of a particularly gruesome scene from the sci-fi action film “Total Recall”, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. In this scene, Arnold wraps a towel around his head and then sticks a metal probe up his own nose.

The probe then proceeds to crawl up into his brain and pull back through his left nostril a glowing red ball that looks way too big to make it out of his nose.  Watching the ball slowly and painfully emerge, I cringed in my seat. As my nine-year-old daughter likes to say, “Now that’s gotta hurt!”

The ball was a “bug” placed into Arnold’s brain -- sort of a human “Lo-Jack” that the bad guys secretly put there to track his movements.  He had to get rid of it if he were going to save the country, planet, universe, etc.

I think that American business needs a similar probe to remove PowerPoint from our collective corporate brain. I’m not saying that PowerPoint is evil. It’s a fine piece of software for creating visuals to illustrate a presentation. 

However, in some critical ways, PowerPoint has grown beyond an illustration tool and merged with our corporate presentation psyche in ways that hamper our ability connect with audiences and give good presentations.

Don’t Use PowerPoint to Draft Presentations

First, the process of creating PowerPoint slides has merged in our corporate brain with the process of initially creating a presentation. As a result, we’re creating terrible presentations.

Here’s a scene that takes place thousands of times every day in corporate America.  Judy wants to create a presentation. So, she sits down at her desk and opens up her PowerPoint software and begins using the program’s easy-to-use templates to outline her message.  Before long, she has created 30 or 40 slides, loaded with bullet-points.  She then goes in front of her audience and narrates her presentation from the slides.

About two minutes into her speech, her listeners are busily thumbing their Blackberries.  Judy has bored her audience with too much detail and too many slides.

Why?

In part, because PowerPoint encourages lots of bullet-points and a boring outline format.  We need to remember that PowerPoint is a program for creating visual aids, not drafting presentations.

Instead of turning so quickly to PowerPoint, Judy should have taken out a blank sheet of paper and written down three simple ideas that she really wanted her audience to take away from her presentation.  Then she could use PowerPoint as a tool for bringing her presentation ideas to life with graphic images.

Don’t Let PowerPoint Rob You of Rehearsal Time

Second, corporate America is spending so much time creating PowerPoint slides that it’s failing to do the most important thing needed to give good presentations: rehearse.

PowerPoint is a horrible time-suck.

I was on the telephone with an architect the other day who told me that they were consistently losing competitive presentations for new business.  When I asked them how much time they spend rehearsing their presentations, they admitted that they didn’t do much rehearsal. But when they e-mailed to me their PowerPoint slides, it was clear that they had spent several days creating gorgeous visuals.

Let’s be clear about something. If it comes down to a choice between PowerPoint and rehearsal, dump the slides. For a 30-minute presentation, use eight to ten slides at the most. Save your time for rehearsal.

Plenty of people are great presenters without PowerPoint. No one is great without rehearsal.

So on PowerPoint’s 20^th birthday, give your listeners a present. Don’t murder them with bullets.  Otherwise, we may have to borrow Arnold’s nostril probe.  And you don't want that.

Joey Asher is President of Speechworks, a selling and communication skills coaching company in Atlanta. He has worked with hundreds of lawyers and with dozens of firms helping them grow their business and connect with clients. He is the author of “Selling and Communication Skills for Lawyers” and “Even A Geek Can Speak.” He can be reached at 404-266-0888 or by . His website is www.speechworks.net.